China announced its new ten-year energy development plan

Major targets set for 2020: meeting the increasing demand, promoting emerging technologies and reducing carbon emissions. New renewable energies are expected to treble their share

The Chinese National Energy Administration (NEA) announced the new 2011 – 2020 ten-year energy development plan. Besides meeting the increasing demand, the latter focuses on promoting emerging technologies and achieving carbon emission reduction targets by 2020. The expected investment amounts to 5,000 billion yuan (roughly 572 billion euros).

The main measures include reducing China’s excessive dependence from coal and abating emissions connected with its combustion (especially sulphur dioxide). NEA calculated that investments made to achieve this goal will be economically compensated by creating an added value estimated in 1,500 billion yuan per year (171 billion euros) and, as regards employment, by creating 15 million jobs until the end of the period. 

Specifically, besides the development of renewable energies (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal), the plan calls for increasing the use of nuclear power, adopting clean coal  technologies for electricity generation and smart technologies for energy transmission and distribution. Also, alternative technologies will be used in the transport sector.

In the mid-period (2015) NEA expects the share of natural gas to double (from the present 4% to 8%) and the joint share of hydropower and nuclear to rise two percent (from 7% to 9%). The new renewable sources will have the highest development rate: indeed, the total share of wind, solar, geothermal and biomass is expected to more than treble, from the scarce 1% currently registered to over 3%. Nevertheless, coal will still account for the remaining 80%.

(July 2010)